“We must love each other like the youthful soldiers of the Theban legion, like Castor and Pollux, to whom legend has never assigned any mistress.”
This conviction of the superior, absolute beauty of man is so bound up in the customs of the gymnasium, that you will find that all men of high culture who devote themselves to physical exercises, acquire with their attachment to the trapeze, the same æsthetic views. The most illustrious example that I can quote on this point is certainly Pierre Loti.
You have read his novel of Azyadé, and you know the enthusiasm with which he speaks of the gymnasium. Remember, on the other hand, the tenderness of the novel-writer for Frère Yvres, recall the Pêcheurs d’Islande clinging to the helm of their boat, and you will more easily realize the [p275] discipline by which gymnastics lead an acrobat who cares for his profession, to the æsthetic admiration for man.
For my own part until I read the works of Pierre Loti, I never thoroughly understood the epithet which Pindar throws in the face of an Olympian victor in a lyrical antistrophe—
“Oh, barren gymnastics!” . . . . .
FOOTNOTES
[12] Originated by “Little Bob” Hanlon.
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